"Well... no way could I blow
down that hay house.
No matter how hard I huffed and puffed and huffed".

And by Jim and Mindy

THE BIG
PLUSES:

-
STRONG - like a fortress particularly after the bales are plastered, but even
before (we would never have known from inside our straw bale that the winds we
got one summer when we first started to build reached 85 mph)

-
INEXPENSIVE TO BUILD -a truly
affordable house if you have the patience and
time to do a good deal of the work yourself and/or
with the help of friends-
DEEP WINDOW-WELLS - some of the best on the
planet for potted plants and cats and curling up to take
a nap in

-
EARTH-FRIENDLY- living as we do in a world with increasingly scarce resources,
doesn't it seem the sensible and responsible thing to do to build a house with
a waste material which is typically burned in the fields after harvest rather
than cutting down more forests to build a wood-framed house -- which is in fact
less energy efficient, less comfortable, and more expensive as well!)A FEW POSSIBLE MINUES:

-
BANKS ARE LESS LIKELY TO LEND MONEY on a
straw bale house, however this is rapidly changing, see sbregistry.greenbuilder.com/mortgage.straw
for a list of financial institutions which have now loaned on straw bale homes

-
A FEW CRANKY NEIGHBORS may view your house as "unconventional" if not
downright disreputable (see PROBLEMS-PROBLEMS
for our troubles with these attitudes and also the unfortunate results of not thoroughly
understanding local zoning and building code regulations)

- SOME LOCAL BUILDING CODESmay not permit the building of a straw bale
house or may impose expensive, time-consuming requirements

-

"LIST OF STRAW BALE HOMES
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC TO VISIT"(741 in the United States - a total of 1612 in the world as of August, 2013)

This wonderful song was composed by straw bale builder and folk singer, Frank Meyer, in 1995. It has been sung at many a straw bale wall raising ever since. It says better than we can what buiding with earth and straw is all about.

All seven of
the books listed below cover slightly different aspects of straw bale construction.
If you are going to build a straw bale house, most if not all are really necessary
as they compliment each other in important ways. If we HAD to choose only two,
it would be "Build it With Bales" and "Serious Straw Bale".
A subscription to "The Last Straw Journal" is also highly recommended.